Customer Reviews

The Merlin of the Oak Wood (Joan of Arc Tapestries, Book 2)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In 1425 France, soldiers' blood continues to flows as decades of war divides the country. England and Burgundy occupy land that rightfully belongs to the French. Soldier-witch Gilles de Raes and his milk brother witch Yann know that the nation will continue to be a river of blood before Merlin's prophecy will save the earth in the guise of a maid from the Bois-Chenau.

In Domenry, Jehannette D'Arc wears the red kirtlee that signifies she is not available for courting. She hears voices in her head that she believes is God telling her what he wants her to do. Unlike most females, Jehannette can ride a horse and fight as good as any male. To many she is the incarnation of Merlin's prophecy and they are ready to follow her into hell once she gives the signal.

Ann Chamberlin writes a powerful mix of mysticism and fact to create the exhaling THE MERLIN OF THE OAK WOODS, setting the stage for Joan of Arc's endeavor to drive invaders from French soil. The juxtaposition of battle scenes with a child growing into a warrior-woman is believable and quite colorful. The only drawback to this powerful historical novel is that readers will need to wait one year for book two.

Harriet Klausner

,,,I think this book is a brilliant piece of fiction, an intelligent fantasy about the pagan culture of medieval Europe. When you start reading it you just get lost in it, you feel like you're really there. I think it's as close as we'll ever get to experiencing pagan life in the Middle Ages. I've read other Ann Chamberlin books and I think she's really a fine writer; I know that The Merlin of St. Gilles' Well was named "One of the Ten Best Fantasy and SF Novels of the Year" by Booklist. If you like really good historical novels and/or fantasy novels, fine prose, and a compelling story, you'll love this. Happy reading!

Historical rights are wrong, left is right, the Church is immoral, and evil is virtuous as long as the goal is OK.

This story, and I must assume the author herself, gives the feeling of a poetic but unfortunately lost soul seeking desperately to overturn anything accepted as "true" or "good" in order to induce a reaction while telling her imagined enlightened version of a period of historical transformation.

The story does successfully recreate the feeling of chaos and mystery that must have surrounded rural life in the middle ages during time of conflict and political upheaval, and throws some intriguing glimpses into the superstitions of the period.

The author has an effective eye for injecting realistic as well as romantic detail and description into each scene, and drops historical colloquialisms as though she uses medieval terms in everyday conversation. Very well.

This story isn't, however, about Merlin, nor is the majority of this entry in the series even about Joan of Arc (still 'Jehannette' here), but rather about the rewriting of history toward a pathetic anti-Christian worldview provided through the eyes of the violent and homosexual anti-hero Gilles. She gives him some severely sympathetic treatment, attempting to draw the reader into identifying with this pagan worldview as well. It is his character that provides the predictable sniping at how weak and immoral all of the self-righteous stick-figure characters - who are held up as representatives of historical Christians - supposedly are. Hopefully the author really isn't on a one-woman anti-Crusade against the historically positive influence of any Christian character, any Alpha Male, or even the power of true (traditional) femininity, in the guise of white-washing Celtic-style pagan magik.

The sexual overtones and mature-reader-only twisting of gender roles do include a spooky narrative of our female future heroine (Joan) - who grew up as a tomboy able to beat up the surrounding males, of course (french feminism 101, anyone?) - in a memorable scene describing her first clothing of herself in a man's armor. Unfortunately, Gilles development as a young warrior is also well detailed as his sexuality is perverted toward homosexual experience through childhood molestation by the uncle he idolized. Too much of the otherwise creative historical fiction is spent in scenes describing the development of this twisted lust and the vivid emotional depiction of his depravity. This baser undercurrent throughout the story surely removes this book from any reading lists appropriate to younger readers (I would place it at collegiate).

The author is creative and talented, but appears to actually buy into the extreme modern (certainly not classical) liberal side of historical fiction rewriters. Of course, if you're pro-Wiccan, pagan, or a fan of alternative occultic world views - that run not magically parallel to, but counter to the truth - you'll find a satisfying fantasy past in the imagination of Ann Chamberlin.

If you're in Germany any time soon, you may also find the follow-up story "Der Erbe des Ermiten" in the bargain bin at the airport, though I'll have to read the entire thing before I critique it here. Suffice it to say we can expect Gilles to develop into a real monster, and Joan won't be portrayed as a saintly Christian heroine fighting for freedom, but a 'virtuous' little witch sensitive to and following the advice of spirit guide Voices...which others would generally refer to mildly as 'fallen angels.' We'll see...

Mysterious. Fanciful. Intriguing. In this sequel to The Merlin of St Gilles' Well, Jehanne d'Arc, La Pucelle, plays more of a central role as she prepares to set foot upon the world's stage in a role few females have played before. Chamberlin's Joan is a young girl caught up in something so immense that she can't comprehend its beginning, its end, or its meaning. Her faith, part Christian, part "old religion", leads her to follow her Voices no matter what the cost. This is a real Joan, a 16-year-old with all the coming of age conflicts of any other young woman, compounded by her mission. No wooden icon here. If you read The Merlin of the Oak Wood with an open mind, it can be a total immersion experience, fun and thought-provoking at the same time. Can't wait for the sequel.

Plodding through the second volume of the JoA Tapestries, I kept drifting back to one of my vivid memories of seventeen years in Utah. I was in a supermarket line, and the ten-year-old boy in front of me said to the cashier, from out of nowhere, "Know what my favorite group is?" She shook her head and he said, "Marilyn Manson." His mother paid no attention. I'll skip the analysis, since it would just lead to accusations of prejudice. Suffice it to say that Ann Chamberlin reminds me of that boy and the world that made him.

Armchair Satanism is as boring as couch-potato patriots and weekend Christians, and the anti-Christ is just the print negative of Jesus. Wicca is not the opposite of Christianity, it's an alternative to patriarchal, exploitive entitlement. If you want to read a real Wiccan novel, try Elizabeth Cunningham's wonderful Maeve Chronicles. What Chamberlin has to offer is just the claim that sour is sweet, and sweet, sour. We'd be better off, she claims, with a religion that puts dogs and cats in cages and burns them. Human sacrifice isn't so bad, once you get used to it. I don't think so.

Reading this alternative version of Joan of Arc, I felt cheated. We're two books in, and she's finally arrived on the scene, in the last sentence of the second book. But see, The Gilles de Rais Tapestries just doesn't have the right ring to it. I felt lied to. Chamberlin wouldn't burn puppies, for all her intellectual posturing. She hasn't quite got the nerve to endorse de Rais' sadistic pedophilia (his hobby was raping children while they died), but she flirts with it, ever so gaily. There is a fundamental dishonesty, just like the anti-piety of that little boy in the supermarket, in her fiction.

And I realized, finally, that I was wasting my time. This is a writer who thought it was cool to begin another novel (Tamar, which I didn't finish) with the assertion that the ultimate act of love is for a man to cut off his genitals. Anne Rice of the Happy Valley. Why am I bothering?

The sole basis for this book's theme, Margaret Murray's theories of a pagan "witch cult" to which numerous historical figures were claimed to belong, is thoroughly discredited and rejected by both historians and most modern pagans alike. Historians have long pointed out that Joan of Arc did not belong to such a cult, and the events in this book likewise bear little resemblance to history.

In terms of writing style and ambience, this is largely standard fantasy, albeit with prose which is somewhat more over-the-top than the norm.